#8 - JRL 8163 - JRL Home
From: Andrei Grachev (GRATCHSERAFIM@aol.com)
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004
Subject: Re: 8155/ 8156 - reply to Sergey Roy
Like Archie Brown who proceded me I cannot stay indifferent and remain silent having read the translation of a piece of a certain Sergei Roy in Moscow News /JRL8155.
Certainly as any other outstanding historic event Gorbachev's Perestroika has already partly turned into mythology and alongside an enormous amount of serious publications has given birth to numerous legends and become a source of income for many political graphomaniacs. Having read lots of them in Russia in the post-Soviet times normally I don't react even to sheer fantasies. In any case it's useless, besides, I don't have enough time. After all publishers in Russia (like Moscow News) are free to publish what they want and readers to read or to ignore.
Those who are interested in the true record of those exciting events have a choice of many really solid publications . I will mention just two that from my point of view are true reference sources: "The Gorbachev Factor" by Archie Brown and Anatoly Chernyaev's memoirs. (Allow me also to remind that I myself published three years ago in Russia and in France a political biography of Gorbachev based on my years of work at his side, hours of conversations with him, his wife Raisa and daughter Irina as well as on comments and recollections of a large number of members of his former team, records of Politburo sessions and the Procurator's dossier of the August 1991 putsch).
If I react now it's because I believe that the readers of JRL deserve better knowledge of true facts. My comment refers not as much to Sergey Roy's piece - that apparently may turn into a saga - but more to Archie Browns' reply to it JRL/8156.
Having spent practically all the years of Perestroika inside the circle of people that surrounded Gorbachev and accompanied him on most of his trips abroad I have never heard the name of Sergei Roy. This certainly should not prevent him from writing on any subject including Gorbachev but at least shows that by definition he uses what should be called the "second hand" sources and information. (From what I've read I don't see him working on some kind of unknown archives).
That should explain why as a true scavenger he is attracted by pieces that smell worst but sell best. One is his assertions about Gorbachev "lying about having read Gramsci". Archie Brown has already exhaustively replied to that. I can only add some names like Sartre, Marcuse and Heidegger to the list he gives and mention that a voluminous library collected by Gorbachev and Raisa in Stavropol that included books from the "white" Progress publications specially translated and circulated among members of Soviet nomenklatura was practically the only luggage they brought with them to Moscow. Gorbachev not only had read Gramsci but reread some of his works in the summer of 1984 before going to Italy for the funeral of Berlinguer.
The other is the tale of Raisa's earrings. It is particularly mean, first because this remarkable woman can no more defend herself (already she was extremely shocked to have heard this gossip being related in public by Eltsin), second because it refers to a woman who was painfully scrupulous with regard to anything that concerned her own (and family's) personal expenses. The explanation of the origin of this journalist's "scoop" is even simpler than suggests Archie Brown. Certainly neither Raissa, nor Gorbachev had at that time an American Express or any other credit card. As Gorbachev says, they even did not really know how they looked like and functioned. For those who saw the way the new Russians (including high ranking officials) behaved in the West in Eltsin's and post-Eltsin's times that may sound unbelievable, but I remind you, we are talking about year the1984 and, what is important in this case, about the Gorbachev couple.
Raisa could not have spent other than her's (or Mikhail's) personal money (certainly not the money of the Embassy as believes Archie Brown). True in Soviet times this personal money in the case of Gorbachev comprised the official per diem (probably considerable and maybe even enough to pay for a pair of earrings) paid to him as the head of a high ranking delegation and member of Politburo. What was done by the embassy person accompanying Raisa on her shopping (since that misrepresented incident she NEVER again went to a shop abroad) was to present a diplomat's card giving the right to discount prices (a practice that benefited most of the Soviet officials travelling abroad).
This episode many times explained would not have deserved a new explanation had it not been an example of political and personal vulgarity alas typical for those unfortunately numerous commentators in Russia who don't find other ways to humiliate Gorbachev and belittle the significance of his contribution to Russia's and world history.